National Grid is cutting some 1,200 jobs across the United States, largely because of losses in the company's Upstate New York business. As our Kat De Maria tells us, the layoffs were announced as part of companywide restructuring plan Monday.

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ALBANY, N.Y. -- It's being billed as a restructuring designed to increase local focus and improve efficiencies and customer service. But most of the plan rolled out by National Grid involves layoffs.

"We anticipate this new alignment will reduce our costs by roughly $200 million per year and this will primarily be done by the reduction of our U.S. workforce by about 1,200 positions," said National Grid U.S. President Tom King.

King says that's about seven percent of all company employees in the country, but will be administrative and management positions only.

"It will mean no change in the men and women who are in the field hanging electric wire, putting up poles, responding to car/pole accidents and getting your lights back on," said company spokesperson Alberto Bianchetti.

King says National Grid is losing money, a lot of it, especially in Upstate New York. Leaders recently asked the state's public service commission to help make up a more than $350 million revenue gap. The PSC gave the company about a third of that.

"What we're faced with now is going back and looking at our investment profile over the next few years, to insure that the investment and the networks are there to continue reliable safe service for our customers. But we also are not going to continue to put a lot of capital at work in Upstate New York until we see the commission begin to make decisions to support that kind of investment," King said.

Another part of the restructuring involves having a president just to handle New York, which leaders say will help the company work better with regulators. Even though the upstate business is underperforming right now, though, Bianchetti says there are no plans to sell it.

"We are committed to making the steps we need to make to make our Upstate New York business a sustainable business. We are here to do that. That's what today is all about is making that commitment," Bianchetti said.

And otherwise adjusting the overall business to support that commitment.

King says he doesn't know yet how many layoffs there will be in each particular region. But he says all areas will see an impact and the exact details will come out by the summer.